New Series, 'The House That Made Me', Edited by Prime Focus is premiered tonight

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New series, The House That Made Me, edited by Prime Focus is premiered tonight

~ Prime Focus has provided grading, audio, offline and online editing for the series; using subtle colour tones to differentiate between past and present~

What makes a house into a home? Is it the brick that gives it shape, the mortar that holds it together, or the memories it holds inside? In this innovative new series of biographical documentaries from production company Nutopia, which premieres with its first episode tonight at 9PM on Channel 4, we are invited to accompany a select celebrity protagonist around a meticulous recreation of the home that they spent their teenage years in, and examine how the events that happened all those years ago have built them into the successful person they stand as today. Prime Focus provided grading, audio, offline and online editing services for the series.

“The guys at Nutopia really liked the idea of differentiating between past and present with subtle colour tones,” said Alex Pickering, who graded and onlined the series. “The mood is quite bleak when Boy George initially returns to his house in the first episode, so to heighten the atmosphere these shots were desaturated and intensified with some fairly thick and heavy vignettes,” Alex related. “When we enter the house and see it fully restored, there’s a transformational moment: the colours become rich, warm, light and saturated, to give the audience a contrast of then and now.”

“There’s a little archive footage in the programme,” Alex continued, “as well as some old photos. I added a smidgen of grain and some flicker to the archive footage, whilst the photos were brought forward from a defocused background, just to animate them slightly, and breathe a bit of life into them.”

Wid Cook was the series’ dubbing mixer. “The audio tracks were balanced and had their dynamic range adjusted so as to sound as full and pervasive as possible, but the concept for the sound design of the series was slightly more complex than you might normally expect for a documentary,” said Wid. “The idea was to create a slightly unnerving, yet magical, aural atmosphere – one of slightly spooky retrospect without overtly being scary – for the scenes when the celebrities initially enter their reconstructed houses. We wanted to capture the feeling of being taken-back whilst being pleasantly surprised, and I think we’ve achieved that subtle mood very well.”

The series had additional audio work completed by Liam Milner and was post produced by Juliet Gonsalves.

Credits

Project: The House That Made Me

Production Company: Nutopia

Production Designer: Patrick Bill

Production Coordinator: Jenny James

Head of Production: Helena Tait

Production Manager: Zoë Korsner

Executive Producers: David DeHaney, Jane Root

Series Producer: Tom Edwards

Produced & Directed by: Abigail Priddle

Prime Focus

Grade: Alex Pickering

Online: Alex Pickering

Audio: Wid Cook, Liam Milner

Post Producer: Juliet Gonsalves

About Prime Focus

Prime Focus is one of the world’s largest visual entertainment services groups, specialising in creative and technical services for the film, broadcast, commercials, music, games, internet and media industries. It operates nine facilities in India, four in the UK and four in North America, offering clients access to a talent pool of over 600 visual effects artists worldwide.

Prime Focus Limited is a public stock company with shares traded in the Mumbai and National Stock exchanges in India (Symbol - PRIMEFOCUS). Prime Focus also owns and operates Prime Focus London plc (Symbol - PFO), which is publicly traded in the LSE’s AIM market. For more information, please visit www.primefocusworld.com.